About Me

Time to start writing. No-one knows how much time they have.

This was a piece I wrote at the direction of my writing tutor on a course I took in 2022 called Unlocking Creativity. I guess it worked.

At age seven my Mum & Dad adopted me as my mother was bipolar. I recall I ate a lot of books at this time.

In primary school I wrote a tiny play. It had a flying saucer in it that I’d made from a shirt-box. I acted in said play, then rushed offstage to do special effects, to wit launching the flying saucer from the wings, like a frisbee.

At age 10 my mother visited, and I presented her with a treasure hunt. It was a series of overwrought clues on scraps of paper hidden about Mum & Dad’s house.

From my early life I had no inner voice, no mind stage where my thoughts would prepare themselves before being spoken or executed.

Instead looking inward I see a lake filled with dark water. What I say and do is unbidden, burping from that lake like a spectre made of swamp gas.

As a teenager I fought with my parents, then moved in with my mother. I showed her some writing that I had done and she reacted with disgust, horrified that a child of hers would create such dross.

My 20’s were not good. I didn’t write.

In my 30s I worked nights in a call centre while studying during the day. And I discovered Dungeons & Dragons, and the Internet. I started writing online.

Today at 60 I write mobile phone apps, and am happy enough.

But stories bug me. They will not leave me alone.

Stories come from that dark lake. A second after being framed, the characters begin to move, motivated by swamp gas spectres while I sit and watch.

Courage to write what I see has been a long time coming.